Just after the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, the journalist Ibrahim Nash’at convinced the Taliban to allow him to embed with its Air Force, hoping the footage he captured would tell a positive story. Instead, Nash’at reveals a dark world of fear and oppression. He spoke with war journalist Mark Danner about the process of making Hollywoodgate.
MARK DANNER: You’ll show the film in Telluride, two years to the day after the Americans left Afghanistan, after 20 years of occupation. The film is a struggle against forgetting. I’m very grateful to you for it.
IBRAHIM NASH’AT: Because I had this camera, I was kept away from the daily suffering of the Afghans. Yet I saw it everywhere I went, inside every gate I passed through. I hope the film makes you feel for the Afghans.
What is most striking about the lm is the amazing access you got to the Taliban. Can you talk about your path to Afghanistan?
I worked as a journalist, a content producer and an assistant editor for Al Jazeera, for Deutsche Welle, for Voice of America. In our programs, we interviewed presidents, vice presidents and people of power from all over the Earth. At first, I was super happy: “Wow, I’m getting to meet the Austrian president, or the Irish president, or the Malaysian president.”
But then as I started to grow up, I realized every one of them came and dumped their words on us. I was a mouthpiece for all of them, a propagandistic tool that they are using to reach the people of the countries where I’m working. I couldn’t do it anymore because I didn’t believe in their agendas. And nobody is holding them accountable for what they say. There’s no fact-checking.
I approached the Taliban through connections I built over many years of journalism. My portfolio is that I come from a religious Muslim family, and I worked with Al Jazeera, which is the only channel they view.
You arrived just after the Taliban won. How did you convince them?
A few weeks after. They knew I was a free camera for them. We’d make an agreement, and every three or four days, they would say, “Don’t come back. Your permission is canceled. You’re not allowed into the Hollywoodgate.”
I would go back and talk to whomever the new boss was and convince him. I didn’t lie to anyone. I didn’t use any betrayal. I said from the beginning, I’m going to film the reality as it is. “People get to see you [the Taliban] and decide if they like you. If they like you, they like you, if they hate you, they hate you.”
The film follows the Minister and the Lieutenant Colonel of the Air Force. How was it decided who you would follow?
It’s God’s will. I met Muhtar [Lieutenant Colonel] on my second day. While he was smiling, I asked him if could lm him in his journey as a head of the military. He said, “That’s great.”
Muhtar very much considered himself a war hero. He said, “If your lm shows the truth, people will see that I’m a hero.” So, I got permission from Muhtar. He loved the presence of me and my camera.
There’s a striking passage in the film where the Taliban is going through the warehouse where the Americans kept medicines and supplies. Thee Minister says, “Here are the medicines—make sure those go to the hospital.” When you return to the same place, the medicine is still there, but it’s expired.
That was one of the moments that hurt me the most. You see that they had a chance to use these medicines. The Taliban would search for every single small part to save an airplane, but they didn’t take a moment to see what medicine was expiring.
It describes the kind of regime they are building. They don’t care about the basic needs of their own people. It’s also clear when the man slaps everyone. They don’t even care about their own men. If they can treat their own men this way, what will become of the people of Afghanistan?
Looming over the whole film is the presence and absence of women. In one very striking scene, you show these beautiful young girls dancing. It’s remarkable. And you show a scene of the Taliban beating some women. Apart from that, there are no women in the film.
I was forbidden from filming anyone other than the Taliban. They accompanied me 24-7. I barely had contact with normal Afghans. I played by these rules from the very first moment. I respected our negotiation, and we didn’t want to endanger anyone to strengthen our film.
We also knew that in the Taliban’s world, women are absent. Their absence in the film is their presence. Through the film, the Taliban talk about women, and describe their ideology about suppressing women and how they control the women.
There’s a remarkable moment where the Air Force minister mentions with pride that he is married to a doctor. “Of course, before I married her, I had one condition: she stop working as a doctor. She agreed immediately.” All of these women have been deprived of the benefits of education and their livelihoods.
And the country is deprived of the women’s qualities. The country is missing and needing half of the nation. The country will never develop. They are stuck. The Taliban consider women to be chocolate, to stay in its cover until it is ready to be eaten.
It should be said that the Americans have been involved in war there since the Carter administration. What do you think in the end will be left of the American presence in Afghanistan?
Those who used to support the Americans and opposed the Taliban did so because they knew the Taliban represented the right wing. After 20 years, the Americans suddenly left, and abandoned many people who worked with them. You get this crazy scene of Afghans going to the airport and trying to jump on airplanes. You can see the depression on their faces. And you can see that they are going to the other side because they have no other option.
The American presence feels like a failure. There was a moment when I was inside the base—this is not in the movie—in an area where people would sit. I’m looking at a shelf of books, and the titles are all about how to build resilience, psychology books. It made me wonder how many American soldiers had their lives destroyed because of this failure to win the war. That’s the brutality of war.
I was there for just one year, and it has negatively impacted my psychology, even though I was blessed with a great team of supporters. Talal Derki, who made Of Fathers and Sons, has been through a similar process. I’m still going to therapy and trying to recover. I ask myself about my suffering, from the small scale of one year, compared to that of the Afghans who have been living there all their lives.
Mark Danner, a Resident Curator at Telluride, has written on politics and foreign affairs, focusing on war and conflict, for three decades, including as a sta writer for the New Yorker. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books. His latest book is Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War.
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